Calle Tredici Martiri • Jason Koxvold & Aldo Varisco

Calle Tredici Martiri (Alley of the Thirteen Martyrs) is a fictionalised photographic reinterpretation of Koxvold’s grandfather Aldo Varisco’s campaign of direct action against the Nazi occupation of Italy. The book is comprised of 144 pages of Koxvold’s photographs and 80 pages of Varisco’s memoirs of the resistance, and archival imagery.

The book’s title refers to the location of the Venetian headquarters of the National Republican Guard at Ca’ Giustinian, which Varisco’s team destroyed with explosives in 1944, killing 13. The following day, the German military shot 13 Italian prisoners in retribution for the attack; Varisco and his team were later captured and extensively tortured. After the war, the street alongside Ca’ Giustinian was renamed “Calle Tredici Martiri.”

Today, the United States is involved in the longest war in the nation’s history, fought against nebulous and invisible terrorists — with yet no end in sight. This project explores the impossibility of photographic truth in the context of the contemporary nexus of capitalism, fascism and consumerism within which we locate ourselves.

Ca’ Giustinian is today the site of the offices of the Venice Biennale.